Ron Paul goes after Gingrich

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The Ron Paul campaign this morning released a fairly devastating (if “fairly” can modify “devastating”) video highlighting some of the contradictions and other problems that Newt Gingrich will have to explain as the frontrunner spotlight shines on him.

Here’s the video:

I don’t really associate Ron Paul with this kind of campaigning and I’m not sure whether Gingrich has a really convincing explanation for some of these things. So let’s reserve judgment.

Judging by the polls, the Gingrich surge to the top tier has now exeeded the previous similar cases of Bachmann, Trump, Perry and Cain.

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The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House’s 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.

The ethics case and its resolution leave Gingrich with little leeway for future personal controversies, House Republicans said. Exactly one month before yesterday’s vote, Gingrich admitted that he brought discredit to the House and broke its rules by failing to ensure that financing for two projects would not violate federal tax law and by giving the House ethics committee false information. Enough Said!!

Of course, since Bachmann, Trump, Perry and Cain are effectively out of the race (everyone but them knows it), that leaves Gingrich and Huntsman as the only anyone-but-Romney candidates. So Gingrinch has inherited an existing protest vote. He’s just a place holder.

Maybe the video means that if Paul smells a chance to win but is running behind, he has no more problem going negative than his opponents.

Not that Gingrich isn’t a flip-flopper of Romneyian proportions and a blatant hypocrite. I just noticed the attacks aren’t all for changing positions and hypocrisy, but also for deviations from conservative orthodoxy.

“The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty …”

You must not have been around then, eh Mike?

The one “ethics violation” was that he used money to fund a college course he had written that may not have been reported properly to the IRS. Later, after Gngrich left congress in disgust, the IRS subquently found him to be in full compliance. The charge was unfounded. Yet he paid the outragous, unprecedented and unwarranted fine with his own money even though he was a man of modest means.

You’ll notice how the matter isn’t raised by democrats because the facts actually favor Gingrich.

“In that investigation, special counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich, in a class titled “Renewing American Civilization,” which he taught at two Georgia colleges, was funded by tax-exempt charities for activities that were “substantially motivated by partisan, political goals.”

Gingrich denied violating tax laws and described his college course as nonpartisan. But he agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty for his misleading statements to the ethics committee as it investigated the financing of the college course and other issues.”

So the penalty was not for violating tax laws.
It was for lying about it. Sound familiar?

Charitable organization did not violate tax-exempt status, agency decides. Now some fear officials will set up such groups to finance causes.

February 27, 1999|ART PINE and ALAN C. MILLER | TIMES STAFF WRITERSWASHINGTON — An Internal Revenue Service decision clearing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) of using tax-exempt money for political purposes has sparked a heated debate over the long-term implications of the memo.

The House Ethics Committee had accused the combative Republican leader of using a course he taught in American politics to promote GOP political causes–in violation of House ethics–and of drawing money from a tax-exempt foundation to help finance such activities.

However, the IRS, after a three-year investigation, earlier this month exonerated the main charitable organization involved, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, of charges that it violated its tax-exempt status.